Pollution
by Cezille07
Summary: Life is different in the thirtieth century. Luckily enough—or maybe, unluckily—Zick and Elena find a time machine. So what do they do with it? Try to improve their present, of course. And include in that list, lessen the pollution.
1. The Thirtieth Century

**Pollution**

_Cezille07_

Life is different in the thirtieth century. Luckily enough—or maybe, unluckily—Zick and Elena find a time machine. So what do they do with it? Try to improve their present, of course. And include in that list, lessen the pollution.

Disclaimer: As you know, I am a _huge_ M.A. fan. I'll leave it at that. (You get it, do you? Must I spell it out every single time I write a "fanfiction"?)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1: The Thirtieth Century (Zick).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up as I normally did. I got up, stretched a bit to shoo off the sleepiness, and hopped into the shower. That being done, I headed downstairs for breakfast. Mom had the table set perfectly, and the meal made it all the more special. A capsule of semi-fried, synthetic bacon! And half a glass of my favorite drink, plant dew—that was one-fourth more than usual, and it was very clean too! My share was gone in a minute. Without waiting for my dad to wake up, I kissed Mom goodbye and set off for school.

But not before I picked up my best friend next door. I waited for her, as I always did, for a routine five minutes during which she did God-knows-what in preparation for the school day ahead. As before, it bought me time to de-clutter my bag...or my thoughts. At least there was a good use to it—well, everything had to have a use, in these times. And usually, it was the freest time I ever got.

Usually.

But I didn't know today was going to be...unusual.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cement dominated the entire city. Most probably it dominated everywhere else too. It was the cheapest substance around, I tell you, cheaper than food, or oxygen, or public transport, or entertainment, or...or....

The cement was the stuff of life. It was all the common people had to build with, to play with, to do everything with. All the metal reserves were depleted (technology was overdriven in the twenty-first century, they told me). There were no trees, no plants. There was no water. There was little food. There were no animals on the streets, in homes. Livestock was a precious resource a countable number of people owned. There was no color, no paint. No clouds—it was mostly fog, or the worse version, smog.

Elena came out at last. "Hi, Zick," she said cheerily.

I replied with less emotion. "Good morning." In a world as dull as this, even emotions seemed extraneous. And don't forget the microchip the government installs in each infant brain, to regulate our body amidst these conditions.

"You look down today," she observed.

"It's nothing," I answered quickly. Nothing was wrong. Everything was perfectly normal, as it has always been, too routine to be wrong. Or it might be that I'm getting to sarcastic about things. But I'm only ten, I ought to lighten up somehow, right? I shrugged the thought away. "Let's go."

We began walking. I took a deep breath...and coughed a bit. It was the least the air did for me. It often did a lot more, but I won't iterate through _that_ list.

Like Elena always did, she shot me this question, "You okay, Zick?" And I answered her like I always did. "I'm fine. The usual."

It seems, though, that the word 'usual' was getting overused here. I _am_ used to living in the thirtieth century. I know all the technicalities it required, what things were before, and how worse it could turn out after a few more years. I knew. Our teacher was the granddaughter of a historian, and she filled our minds with idealistic conditions we found hard to imagine.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On second thought, what seemed impossible materialized right in front of us. Now _this_ was hard to imagine, but it was real enough not to vanish after the first blink.

A metallic box, approximately two feet wide, three feet long, and six feet tall, slowly blurred into reality. It almost looked pulled right out of the craziest sci-fi movie. Buttons all over the rusty door, wires tangled around the body. Some electric sparks shot from it.

Our mouths hung open for a long time, and the first movement we both took was a disbelieving look at each other.

"Looks like a time machine," I mumbled.

Time machines were all the rage, with all the inventiveness and technology to be inspired from, but of course none of them really worked. According to the Special Theory of Relativity, if you travel at speeds approaching the speed of light, your perception of time slow down, while everything else around you proceeds normally. After you stop moving, you're in the future. Rather, it's still the present, but it's not the time you came from. It depends where you're observing from, yes, but the point is you've moved into a different time. It only worked in one direction, forward. Time machine programmers were racing to reach back into the past (perhaps to bring back here an essence of what was before, the bountiful supplies, mostly).

This one, it was entirely different. The material it was made of was metal. _Metal. _Its design and structuredidn't follow conventions either.

But who knows? What if this is the machine that'll really work?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Yes, the Special Theory of Relativity includes that. (This is one of the fics Natural Science inspired for me.)


	2. Welcome to the Past

**Pollution**

_Cezille07_

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2: Welcome to the Past (Elena).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to convince him, but his little genius mind had everything figured out. Plan: We test the machine. If it works backward, we test it forward. If it doesn't work forward, we'll find some high-velocity transportation device to return to _our _present time. If we get trapped in a different time, the machine would still be with us and hopefully the people we land with can help us out.

But when we stepped out of the machine...I don't know, it was hard to describe.

Everything was beautiful. Vibrant. Alive! It was invigorating just to stand there!

Then something weighed on my shoulder. I realized it was Zick.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I asked this question too much, I think he might be learning to answer "Nothing" out of habit instead of telling the truth. He always wanted to keep me out of things, naturally. He never let me come on his 'adventures'.

Now, he didn't answer. He didn't move. He was leaning there. Breathing deeply.

"Oxygen," he breathed. "There's a lot of oxygen...."

I don't know if it should alarm or excite me. Oxygen? That element essential to breathing and combustion? So what if there's plenty of oxygen here?

"...A lot more than I'm used to," he finished, his voice sounding exhausted. He stood up on his own, shakily, and gave the place a critical look. He heaved a large sigh. "Everything's different here. I wonder what time we're in?"

I debated for a moment whether or not to leave him there, and ended up doing so without another thought. There was a nearby wooden bench (what a strange material to be making a bench out of) where a crumpled newspaper lay. I picked it up and read the date.

"June 29, 2009!"

Zick followed me and stared hard at the newspaper. "We're really in 2009? The time machine worked!"He looked around again. "That might explain what's going on here. The abundance of...of...."

I grinned once I realized the word he was looking for. "Fresh!"

And he smiled too. "Fresh air...."

I took lungfuls of fresh air and laughed aloud. "Fresh air! It's so clean!"

"It feels different. We're not used to this much oxygen content in the air. It's possible to drown in the substance, you know," he warned cautiously.

"Forget it! I love this place, I love the clean surrounding! I love it that not everything is made of cement, and it's way more colorful and...and _alive_ here!"

I skipped a few feet and just took in the scenery. Twenty-first century Old Mill was really something! There were a string of warm houses lining both sides of the street, a few people here and there. Actually I noticed the clothes they were wearing. It was simpler. Some even looked like uniforms similar to ours.

"Zick, look at them! They're students, and they must be going to school!" I pointed.

He smiled darkly. "That's where we should be too. Nine hundred years later."

"Let's follow them. School here must be different! And we'll learn things from there anyway too!"

He nodded.

"That's it? Not much as a 'Sure' or a 'Yeah' or any expression whatsoever?" I pressed. He looked lifeless there, if not lifeless, very weak. "What's wrong with you? Are you blaming the oxygen?"

He moved one step closer to me and grasped my arm. I was alarmed. "Elena," he whispered, "we're from the future. We're testing this time machine, but even if that's not the reason we'd give, we'd still look outcast."

"Oh why are you so pessimistic? Come on!" After I turned away, I sighed in relief. I wasn't used to him that close. I looked behind. He still hadn't moved. "What are you waiting for? We don't have all nine hundred years, and before you know it we're back in our time."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't understand what he was afraid of. I mean, this is Zick! The adventurous little fellow everyone avoided—well, that was everyone except me. I know when something's special when I see it. And he was just one of them. Only, he's been this down lately; I don't know if it's because the cement in our time was really a dreadful color, or if life was just that repetitive—notice his use of the word 'usually', 'as always', or 'often'?

So we reached the school. It looked just like ours for most part. But it was painted elegantly. Curtains hung around the windows. There was a little playground that was no longer there in our version of the school. And the students! They were playing like there's no tomorrow. The smiles on their faces were unlike any I've seen in all my ten years of life.

One of them, a tiny girl with remarkably flaming hair, brushed against us as she ran from a Tourist bus. She was playing by herself, but she looked really enjoyed. We saw a class of students through a window near the main entrance, and a kid about this girl's age was staring out the window into nothing. His bored expression suddenly shifted into one of surprise at the sight of something—but when I followed his line of sight my eyes rested on a mud puddle. I shrugged.

"What do you think about this time, Zick?" I asked, not taking my eyes off the boy.

Zick was motionless. "It's the air," he half-whispered. Or half-excused was more like it.

"Blend in, we're still people like them." I looked at him, but he was watching the boy too.

"He's looking at the..." he began.

"The what?"

Then he looked at me. "Never mind. I'm not okay, okay? I must be seeing things. Let's go home, to our time. Unless you want to go further back."

Oh, now he's admitting he's not feeling well? I'm not buying it. "What's to hide? Tell me!"

"Nothing! Let's go!" He took my arm and led the way back to the time machine.

"Well, goodbye to the wonderful past we could have lived," I said to the air as I glanced back at where we came from.

"You...you don't understand," whispered Zick. He held back some outburst, and when he looked at me again I couldn't understand what expression he was wearing. "You don't understand what's going on here."

"Well, you're not enlightening me," I hinted with a wink.

"This is serious! This is...our past!"


	3. Welcome to OUR Past

**Pollution**

_Cezille07 _

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3: Welcome to _Our_ Past (Zick).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was it that hard to understand? This is our past! Those children we were watching—the girl, and the boy! That was us! Me and Elena, five year old versions of us. Nine hundred years ago. Or, technically speaking, _now_. It sounded really bizarre, but nine hundred years ago, we were alive in _this_ beautiful place.

She looked more amused than shocked. "So are you going to tell me more?"

I was irritated by her innocence. But I knew better than to start fighting here with her. I knew that she's the reason I'm pretty much alive and sane as I am. "This is too weird to be true," I answered slowly. "Even for all the new things from our time."

"So we go back home?"

I paused. When I realized what was happening, that was the first thought that came through me. Go home. But then again, as our 'past', or rather a 'past life', it's a life we could be living too if global conditions weren't too harsh in the thirtieth century.

"No, Elena." I looked up and turned. "Let's go check the city." The city. Would cement reign supreme over it, or like the little neighborhood would warmer things make up its foundations? And if we asked people, would their attitudes about the world be more positive, more hopeful? Because I know now, that if we act, we could reverse whatever was happening in our time. We could be living in a better place!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our teacher (the same granddaughter of a historian I mentioned) said that the cause of pollution was entropy. It's one of the thermodynamic functions that explained why chemical reactions took place—all matter strives to attain a state of randomness. Ice melts to be liquid so it can flow and be more disordered. Water evaporates for the same reason, to achieve haphazard motion. Add sugar to a cup of coffee and they mix such that they become inseparable; the initial, ordered substances are turned into a mixed, disordered state. These changes are spontaneous because it favors randomness, and can occur once the conditions are right. Unlike...say electrolysis. Electricity has to be supplied for the water molecule to dissociate into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. This is not spontaneous, and cannot continue without the outside assistance of electricity to occur.

Now, man has always been trying to order things, civilizing even nature—but nature lives for randomness. The disorder has to be expressed elsewhere. As we concretize our streets and plough our lands, the Earth releases its natural tendencies elsewhere: through stronger volcano eruptions, more violent tidal waves, more destructive hurricanes.

The term nature strikes back just got more meaningful.

The city striking back, though....

It just _blew_ me away.

No, not even Elena's questions could haul me back from my stupor.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What were these _things_? Wooden walkways suspended in the sky, large, bulging structures resembling pods hanging on the edges of buildings! I had never seen anything like them.

I doubted asking Elena if she saw them too, but she looked absorbed in the daily lives of twenty-first century people. They had their good parts too. Fruit stands, "ice cream" vendors (whatever that was), soda machines. Most of all, the busy traffic. The common life they ignored was a treasure to us. If only they knew how _we_ needed those in the future.

She ran up to a man catching a bus. "Excuse me, sir, what do you call this place?"

The man just missed his ride and looked crossly at Elena. "Big Burg. What, are you a tourist, little girl?"

"It's not my first time here, technically, but I've never seen it like this," and she winked at me.

I felt like grabbing her hand and running away. Something was off about that man. Maybe it was the look on his face, or the way he wore his glasses. Or his clothes, maybe? Whatever it was, he wasn't normal. At least, less normal than I was.

"Thank you, sir, but my friend and I will be going," I excused. I pushed Elena elsewhere and sighed. Should I really tell her what I saw? Everything I saw? Now I realized I knew why that man was different. He wasn't human at all. I choked inside when it hit me, but whatever human was, he wasn't it. His skin was different. And if you looked closer, his arms and legs ended in a tentacle-like structure, not hands. I looked back at him one last time, and he was doing the same, confusion written on his face.

"Listen, Elena, there are too many things going on around here," I told her.

She discarded this easily with, "But you were the one who wanted to find out what was here! And you got it. So how do you like old Big Burg?"

"Not at all. Listen to me, we need to get back."

"Back to whatever's too normal," she answered absent-mindedly. She was still looking at everything, marvelling at everything here.

If she only saw the city _above_ the city. Then we'd start talking.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We walked around some more until our feet got tired. I reached into my pocket to check if my wallet was there. My backpack was in the time machine along with our other things. It was too far to return to just for a snack. It was Elena's idea to try at least one bit of every food item we saw in the area. Then we'd go home. It was her last request so I agreed.

"How much for one of those 'pancakes'?" I asked the stout man uninterestedly watching his stall. I wondered if he knew I had no clue what on earth a pancake was.

"No one's been buying all day since those ice cream stands popped up! You can have twenty for a dollar!" he answered excitedly. "I can't have these go to waste, you know. We're in pretty hard times, kids."

I was pleased with his last sentence. At least one man knows the future is in peril if they don't save their resources. I paid him a dollar, and he handed me the order in a brown paper bag.

"Thanks a lot! Come back when you're hungry," he called as we walked away. I waved back and noted the name of the stall, "Ronnie Richie's Pies and Pancakes". I will come back, I thought. I have to try a pie one day, whatever it is.

Just as Elena was enjoying her first few bites of delicious pancake, I happened to look to the left of the stall and see a kind of elevator descending from nowhere. The few occupants filed out in an orderly manner and went on with their business. A large, red creature stood in the middle and looked out for any more passengers. He saw me, called, "Going up, my friend?" I shook my head quickly, took a pancake, and stuffed the entire thing in my mouth.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Once again, I took the entropy from my Nat Sci class.


	4. A City of Monsters, To the Mountains

**Pollution**

_Cezille07_

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4A: A City of Monsters (Zick).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everywhere I seemed to look, there were monsters. I bought almost anything Elena pointed at to keep her busy, but the truth was I didn't want to talk. I was really baffled. Monsters. Could you believe it? _Monsters_!

"Hey Zick, I can tell you're not telling me something," Elena said between two large bites on her chocolate doughnut.

"You're right," I admitted. "Aside from this time being our past, Big Burg has this big city above it, and monsters are everywhere among us."

"Yeah right. Tell me."

Of course she didn't believe me. I sighed, looked wildly around for any explanation, any lie to cover up. She might be getting tired of me keeping her out of things, but the things I saw were too out-of-this-world to deserve credit. I mean, there were things in our time, in the 'future', that one can easily call strange. My dad is a usually secretive man, but the few times we hang out, when he's not working, he tells me there used to be a grand place outside the city where special people gather and exchange stories and items. I had one last place to check here before I conclude that these peculiar things made any sense.

"We have to check the mountains."

"What?!"

"It's a few kilometers north of the city. We can follow the river—"

"Since when have you been so well-versed in Big Burg's old map?"

And...she had a good point. Our river was three feet deep, filled to the brim with trash, dying it gray at most parts, black in others. What's left of the forest was destroyed in a fire brought about by a terrible heat wave just before I was born. And the thirtieth century mountains were actually flat expanses of unproductive land, quarried long ago for development until they realized that there were no more resources to make the buildings appealing, no commodities to invite guests, and no money to continue the projects. All we had was cement, remember? Cement to build with and play with.

I just hope those landscapes were still landscapes now.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4B: On the Way to the Mountains (Elena).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The mountains, these were the very landscapes our teacher so _fondly_ described! And they were a breathtaking sight too! But no, that wasn't just a pun. I had never seen Zick's inhaler that used up.

From afar, they were lush, green mounds of land gracefully sitting on the edge of civilization. They were surrounded by tall trees competing for sunlight in a maze of diverse life forms scattered all around: flowers, insects, little fish skimming the river's surface. The river was the most majestic spectacle of all. Fresh, clean enough to drink, and full of beauty in each rock and creature coexisting peacefully, mutually benefitting from the other's presence.

I wished it was like that where we live. People just don't care anymore. Nothing's left, so why save? Why care? The earth was a big garbage dump headed for oblivion.

"Look at that!" I pointed. Zick directed his glance to the tree I indicated.

"What?"

"It's a...what is it called? A bird's home in a tree. They lay eggs and raise their young there."

"A nest?"

"A nest!"

A nest seemed like a symbol of new life and hope for the future, exactly what we needed right then. I grinned, and he grinned. Finally, he seemed to be accepting that this world used to be ours. Our past, he actually called it. But the longer we walked, the more I felt he was crawling into this shell of mental safety. Like I said, his life was built around routines, around the 'usual'. Everything here was new and different. I hoped what he was looking for here would pay off for this effort.

He was looking at the river, and I glanced there too. He concealed his surprise when something in the water moved to disturb it the way it did, as if something were jumping out. But there was nothing. I screamed.

"H-hello," he said. To what? "We mean no harm!"

As if something would talk back, right? But he spoke again. "We need your help. Can you take me and my friend to the mountains? It's still a long walk."

Fine, I didn't mind this. Maybe he's a little weird sometimes. Maybe now more than ever. This morning. He saw what the little boy in the classroom was looking at. He saw something in the man I spoke to about the city's name. He saw something near the pancake stall. All of those things, I couldn't see them. But I'll take anything. I'll trust him. He's Zick, after all.

"Come on," he told me. "Give me your hand."

But not _this_ much! "Wait, what are we doing?" I asked nervously. "I trust you but you could at least let me know what's gonna happen!"

"There's time for that later—"

"I'd trust you with my _life_, Zick, but you have to tell me!"

He looked at the river, where his alleged acquaintance was waiting to—what, give us a ride like he requested? "I'm _glad_ you trust me, honest! But I'll tell you everything later."

I hesitated. Our friendship was being tested, I understood, but the fate of our time may depend on this. I let him lead me to some object that floated above the river, some 'creature' that moved when we were safely seated.

"Thanks," he said. To me? Or to his invisible 'friend'? I don't know. But of course, I won't settle for not knowing. One way or another he's gonna have to tell me what's shaken him like this.


End file.
